Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, 80, A Top Crime Boss, Dies in Prison

By JAMES DAO

Published: July 29, 1992

Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, the rough-talking, cigar-chomping boss of the Genovese crime family who rose from running numbers in East Harlem to rigging construction bids on Manhattan skyscrapers, died Monday night, Federal prison officials said yesterday.

Mr. Salerno, who had been in failing health since entering the prison system in 1989, died of complications from a stroke that he suffered on July 18, the officials said. He was 80 years old.

Mr. Salerno was serving terms of 100 years and 70 years on separate Federal racketeering convictions when he suffered the stroke at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo. He never recovered, said Charles Peterson, an executive assistant to the warden. La Cosa Nostra Boss

In 1986, Mr. Salerno was identified by Federal prosecutors as a senior member of "the commission," the ruling council of the five principal crime families in La Cosa Nostra. As boss of the 200-member Genovese family, his influence ranged from Miami's waterfront to Cleveland labor unions to New York City's concrete industry, prosecutors said.

In a much-debated 1986 article, Fortune magazine rated him the most powerful and wealthiest gangster in America, citing earnings in the tens of millions from loan sharking, profit skimming at Nevada casinos and charging a "Mafia tax" on New York City construction projects. At the time, he maintained a home in Miami Beach, a 100-acre estate in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and an apartment in Gramercy Park.

"He was extremely powerful," said Howard Abadinksy, professor of criminology at St. Xavier University in Chicago and the author of several books on organized crime. He compared Mr. Salerno to the reputed head of the Gambino family at that time, Paul Castellano. "Castellano was perhaps first among equals, but Fat Tony would have been the other most powerful figure on the East Coast." Fedoras and T-Shirts

Unlike younger Mafia leaders like John Gotti, Mr. Salerno typified a more old-fashioned gangster ethic that frowned on flamboyance that might attract attention. In sharp contrast to Mr. Gotti's $1,000 designer suits, he was known to hold counsel dressed in a fedora and T-shirt.

On a wiretap at a mob hangout, Federal agents once recorded Mr. Salerno bemoaning a disrespectful young gangster who had called him "Fat Tony" to his face. "If it wasn't for me, there wouldn't be no mob left," Mr. Salerno said. "I made all the guys."

Born in East Harlem in 1911, Mr. Salerno established his base there and never strayed far from the community, maintaining his headquarters at the Palma Boy Social Club.

In 1959, when he was already well known to the Manhattan District Attorney as a "gambler, bookmaker and policy operator," an investigation into the Mafia's involvement in promoting boxing found that Mr. Salerno had secretly helped finance a heavyweight title fight at Yankee Stadium between Ingemar Johansson and Floyd Patterson. Mr. Salerno was not charged in the case.

By the 1960's, Mr. Salerno was said by prosecutors to run Harlem's biggest numbers racket, which they estimated earned as much as $50 million a year. Yet despite his notoriety among prosecutors, Mr. Salerno's first criminal conviction did not occur until 1978, when he pleaded guilty to Federal tax and gambling charges, for which he was sentenced to six months in prison. Prosecutors charged Mr. Salerno with accepting at least $10 million annually in illegal policy wages but reporting only $40,000 on his income taxes. Roy M. Cohn, Mr. Salerno's lawyer, described his client as a "sports gambler."

During the 1980's, following the retirement of Philip Lombardo, Mr. Salerno became boss of the Genovese family. But though he had reached the pinnacle of his power, he would spend almost all his remaining life behind bars.

In 1986, after a dramatic 10-week trial that helped establish the use of racketeering statutes against the mob, Mr. Salerno and seven other defendants were convicted of operating the "commission" that ruled the Mafia throughout the United States. He was sentenced to 100 years on the conviction.

In his final trial, Mr. Salerno was convicted in 1988 for a scheme to allocate contracts and obtain payoffs for constructing the concrete superstructures of 16 Manhattan buildings, including the Jacob J. Javits Convention Center, Trump Plaza and a residence for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He was sentenced to 70 years on that conviction.

Photo: Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno after a 1989 racketeering conviction. He was already serving time on a previous conviction. (Associated Press, 1989)